Top Democrats are aggressively pushing the claim that Republicans’ worries about voter fraud are an insincere excuse to suppress voting by African-Americans and Hispanics.

But former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis told The Daily Caller that anti-fraud measures are needed to protect African-Americans from corrupt political bosses — many of them African-Americans themselves — who run Democratic Party machines in the South.

On Nov. 14, progressive Democratic Reps. John Conyers, Steny Hoyer, Jerrold Nadler, Keith Ellison, Steve Cohen, Marcia Fudge and Emanuel Clearer, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus — along with representatives from several advocacy groups — held a meeting to complain about what they say is the danger posed by laws that require voters to identify themselves.

Artur Davis is unimpressed.

“What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities — the landfills, the casino operators — and they’re cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they’re manufacturing absentee ballots, they’re voting [in the names of] people named Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress,” he told TheDC.

“People who are progressives have no business defending those individuals.”

Davis is free to talk publicly because he quit electoral politics in 2010, giving up his African-American-dominated district to run for the Democratic nomination in the 2010 gubernatorial race. He lost in the primary, and the the winning Democrat subsequently lost to the Republican by 16 points, 42 percent to 58 percent.

this is how obama can squeak out a win in 2012. make is close enough to cheat.

don't worry though, the repubs won't march in protest more than 1 afternoon per month. THey understand that any real protests justify being hosed with tear gas. since they were okay with teh OWS wimps getting maced, surely they'll be okay with it whne they're protesting a stolen election.

THE idea of requiring voters to prove they are who they say they are before casting a ballot, as several states have done in recent years, has Democrats riled up. They promise a strong push in 2012 to right these so-called wrongs.

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Democratic Party officials are, as The Associated Press reported, “organizing on a number of fronts to overturn some of the measures, educate voters on the types of documents necessary to vote and pursue lawsuits if necessary.”

Our guess is they won't be visiting Oklahoma, whose voter ID law was given 74 percent approval by voters last year. Here are two reasons: Our law provides voters a wide berth when it comes to providing documentation, and a current effort to challenge it is having a tough time.

A woman filed suit last year in Tulsa County naming then-Gov. Brad Henry as a defendant. A judge said that wasn't the proper venue and ordered the lawsuit moved to Oklahoma County. The woman's attorney dismissed that suit and filed a subsequent lawsuit this year, naming the state Election Board. The state Supreme Court recently said Oklahoma County is the proper venue for the case because that's where the Election Board is housed.

The lawsuit contends Oklahoma's new law impinges on those who don't have an appropriate ID “or who are unwilling to accept any level of this statewide infringement on the right to vote.”

We've never understood the infringement argument, which is a staple of Democrats on this issue. Requiring an ID to cash a check or board an airplane or buy a pack of smokes isn't seen as onerous. But somehow doing the same to cast a vote is?

That's a weak argument, particularly in Oklahoma. State law requires voters to show a driver's license or other government-issued photo ID. Failing that, they can use other identification such as the voter card that's issued free by county election boards. Finally, if they have no ID when they arrive to vote, they can cast a provisional ballot.

Other states have stricter rules. For example, some allow for provisional ballots but require voters to return to the polling place with an ID within a certain time frame in order for their vote to count. Those states are sure to get a visit from Democratic Party forces.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of voter ID laws. Studies conducted after the 2008 election showed they didn't hurt turnout among blacks and other groups that Democrats say are most likely to be adversely affected. These efforts to overturn or weaken the laws have an air of desperation to them.

On Tuesday night, I spoke in Austin, Texas at a rally organized by True the Vote. It took place on the grounds of the LBJ library on the campus of the University of Texas. The rally was in response to Eric Holder’s announcement at the same place two hours later of a concerted Justice Department effort to oppose virtually every electoral integrity measure promoted by Constitutional conservatives and Republicans.

Holder’s announcement will have profound partisan results in the 2012 election because of his professed unwillingness to enforce laws to prevent voter fraud. Indeed, tonight he made clear his opposition to these laws, such as voter ID and even the requirement to register to vote in advance of an election.

Holder announced broad opposition to voter identification requirements and a ramped up effort to enforce voting registration laws in welfare agencies. He didn’t make any announcements about enforcing Section 8 of Motor Voter to ensure dead people don’t populate the roles. He also said that voter fraud “isn’t a huge problem,” perhaps marking the first time the nation’s chief law enforcement downplayed criminal behavior. Of course that is in vogue in this administration, starting with the New Black Panther dismissal and now with Fast and Furious.

In opposition to Holder, I spoke, as did a group of inspiring patriots starting with Catherine Englebrecht of True the Vote. Anita Moncrief, Reverend C. L. Bryan, George Rodriguez (head of the San Antonio Tea Party) and Adryana Boybe, National Director of VOCES Action followed. Boybe’s speech defending Texas Voter ID may be the first time I heard the policy defended in Spanish. Moncrief, though, had the line of the night – that “Al Sharpton has a platinum race card.”

Holder laid down markers which will excite his base and disturb law abiding citizens. He supported restrictions on political speech which will criminalize campaign falsehoods. He vowed hyper-scrutiny of voter integrity laws such as voter ID and vowed to run states like Texas through a nasty gauntlet on redistricting. If this doesn’t send a signal to Texas and South Carolina to pull their Voter ID laws out of Justice and go to court, nothing else will. Also in attendance was Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, a staring character in my book Injustice.

Holder brought along his puppy, Charlie Savage of the New York Times, from whom we can expect glowing sycophantic coverage of Holder’s announcement at any minute at the New York Times website. Savage is the same reporter who covered purported politicization at the Bush Justice Department. For this he won a Pulitzer Prize.

PJ Media’s Every Single One series reported on the same story Savage did, except this time on the 113 attorney hires by the Obama Civil Rights Division. Savage only covered a handful of Bush hires – he had to, otherwise his story wouldn’t work because the Bush DOJ hired scores of liberal activist lawyers. But the Obama Justice Department gives no quarter to the enemy in hiring, and hired 113 leftists out of 113 openings. I described in my book Injustice how PJ Media had to sue Eric Holder to extract this information:

During the Bush era, DOJ leaders quickly fulfilled FOIA requests. For instance, in 2006 Charlie Savage, then at the Boston Globe, requested all the resumes of the recently hired attorneys in the Bush Civil Rights Division. The DOJ leadership produced the materials within days, well ahead of the legal deadline—they acted so fast, in fact, that some colleagues and I complained they were rushing. Suspecting we were being set up for a leftwing smear campaign, we urged DOJ officials to protect our privacy while fully complying with the requests. But our concerns were ignored and the information was rushed out anyway, resulting in a slew of slanderous media stories, some attacking us in extremely personal ways, followed by curious questions from our family members about why we were in the news. There was a particularly merciless leftist blogosphere attack on a pair of attorneys who happened to be two of the hardest working and most dedicated lawyers in the entire Voting Section.

After PJ Media obtained the Obama hiring information, Savage, ever the cuddly puppy, wrote a puff piece about the Obama hiring practices. Gone was his outrage over politicized hiring that he exhibited at the Boston Globe for the Bush DOJ. That’s what PJ Media is for – reporting on stories the dying dead trees media won’t. Given the scope of the Every Single One series, perhaps PJ Media deserves a Pulitzer too. If Charlie got one, PJ Media certainly should. Stay tuned.

Group Tied to Voter Registration Fraud Lobbies DOJ to Use National Voting Rights Act to Boost Welfare Voter Registration; Project Vote Official Promotes Hires for Department of Justice’s Voting Section

Washington, DC -- December 14, 2011

Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it obtained records detailing communications between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Estelle Rogers, a former ACORN attorney currently serving as Director of Advocacy for the ACORN-connected organization Project Vote. ( Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 11-1497)). Judicial Watch is investigating the DOJ’s partnering with Project Vote on a national campaign to use the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) to register more individuals on public assistance, widely considered a key voting demographic for the Obama 2012 campaign. President Obama previously worked for Project Vote.

According to the records, obtained pursuant to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on August 19, 2011, “civil rights groups” met with Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli on March 17, 2011 , to specifically discuss Section 7 of National Voting Rights Act, which requires states to offer voter registration services at all public assistance agencies. The groups included Project Vote, the American Association of People with Disabilities, Demos, the League of Women Voters, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Fair Elections Legal Network, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund, and Paralyzed Veterans of America.

On March 29, 2011, Rogers and the “undersigned voting rights groups” that met with Perrelli on March 17, 2011, sent detailed recommendations to the associate attorney general for strengthening “compliance with the NVRA. Forwarded to Perrelli by Rogers, the recommendations stated “we are grateful that you have invited us to continue this dialogue on the Department’s [DOJ’s] role in providing guidance to states, and we would be happy to supply any additional information you need.”

The records also detail an effort by Rogers to secure jobs for three individual applicants for positions with Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section, the department within the DOJ responsible for enforcing the National Voting Rights Act:

•In a February 23, 2010, email to T. Christian Herren , Chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, Rogers wrote, “I want to heartily recommend two candidates to you. [NAMES REDACTED]” In an April 20, 2010, email, Rogers wrote, “I look forward to continuing to work with you, Chris. And please let me know if you need any more feedback regarding hires.” •In a December 7, 2010, email, Rogers wrote, “I’d still love to talk for real, but in the meantime, the main reason I called is that you have an applicant for the [REDACTED] position [REDACTED] qualifies her beautifully for your position, and I hope you will give her every consideration. [REDACTED] So she would be a great fit, and I recommend her without reservation. Please let me know if I can tell you more. And give me a call if you possibly can.” In a July 13, 2010, email to Herren and DOJ political appointee Julie Fernandes , Rogers references NVRA litigation and she informs Herren that she will be bringing Niyati Shah to a meeting at the DOJ. Shah “will be working on a lot of the litigation we’ll be telling you about,” Rogers writes. Rogers also indicated Nicole Kovite Zeitler, director of Project Vote’s public agency registration project, would also attend the meeting. As reported by The American Spectator’s Matthew Vadum, Zeitler “manages Project Vote’s efforts to advocate for enforcement of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 through technical assistance and litigation across the country,” according to her bio on Project Vote’s website.

As Director of Advocacy for Project Vote, Estelle Rogers – a former attorney for ACORN, which was besieged with charges of corruption and fraud before declaring bankruptcy in November 2010 – is a primary contact person on policy matters at Project Vote on both state and federal levels and has been actively involved in voter registration issues. By threatening lawsuits under Section 7 of the NVRA, Project Vote has aggressively sought to force election officials in various states to increase the registration of people receiving public assistance.

On June 20, 2011, Rogers and the ACLU co-wrote a letter to the DOJ, asking the department to block Florida’s new election integrity law (H.B. 1355). Florida has since withdrawn its application to the DOJ for “preclearance” of the law, and has taken its case to court instead.

On August 4, 2011, Judicial Watch released documents obtained from the Colorado Department of State showing that ACORN and Project Vote successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons. Following the policy changes, the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies was four times the national average. Project Vote also sought a “legislative fix” to allow people without a driver’s license or state identification to register to vote online.

In addition to pursuing public agency registration cases in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and New Mexico, Project Vote and the NAACP filed a lawsuit on April 19, 2011, against the State of Louisiana alleging violations of the NVRA. Less than three months later, on July 12, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division/Voting Section sued Louisiana on the same grounds, claiming that “Louisiana officials have not routinely offered voter registration forms, assistance and services to the state’s eligible citizens who apply, recertify or provide a change address for public assistance or disability services.”

The DOJ also sued the State of Rhode Island on March 11, 2011, alleging violations of the NVRA. The lawsuit led to policy changes intended to increase the number of voter registration applications processed by “public assistance and disability service officers.” These two lawsuits, filed within five months of each other, are the first such lawsuits filed by the DOJ since 2007.

Project Vote and the “community organization” ACORN have both been linked to massive voter registration fraud. A total of 70 ACORN employees in 12 states have been convicted of voter registration fraud. And as documented in a July 2009 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of the 1.3 million registrations Project Vote/ACORN submitted in the 2008 election cycle, more than one-third were invalid.

Moreover, Project Vote’s “Field Director,” Amy Busefink, who handled the online registration campaign for Colorado, entered an Alford plea to two gross misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters in Nevada while working for ACORN. (An Alford plea is a guilty plea, where the defendant does not admit the act or assert innocence, but admits that sufficient evidence exists with which the prosecution could likely convince a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.)

“It is an affront to the rule of law and a threat to the integrity of our elections that the ACORN-front Project Vote is coordinating with the Holder Department of Justice on voting law,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Now we know why the Holder DOJ never bothered to fully investigate voter registration fraud by Project Vote/ACORN – because Project Vote and the Department of Justice seem to have implemented a joint litigation strategy in the run up to the 2012 elections.”

Mo. Counties' Registered Voters Exceed PopulationFourteen of the state's 114 counties had more registered voters than voting-age adults. Several others had registration rolls almost equal to their adult populations.

More Voter Registration Shenanigans: Indianapolis Has 105% Of Its Population Registered To VoteSo we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!

Some Georgians Suspected Of Voting TwiceA team of investigative journalists from WSB-TV in Atlanta, WFTV in Orlando and WFTS in Tampa and WCPO in Cincinnati compared Georgia's voter rolls with those in Florida and Ohio and found more than 100,000 people who appear to be registered to vote in more than one state, with no government oversight to catch it.

Local 2 Investigates Dead VotersTexas Watchdog compared Harris County's voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and found more than 4,000 matches -- registered voters that, it appears, are already dead.

Recall that on November 4, 2008, a pair of thugs in paramilitary garb and holding nightsticks stationed themselves outside a polling place in Philadelphia. Recall as well that they were members of the New Black Panther Party, ostensibly there to act as ad hoc "security" for the polling place and voters. How very thoughtful and civic-minded.

"All eligible citizens can and should be automatically registered to vote," and it's the government's "responsibility" to see that it happens, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday.

In a call to modernize voter registration, Holder noted that many elections officials still are manually processing new applications, many of them handwritten -- a situation that produces errors and confusion at the polls, he said.

You have to have ID to drive a car, purchase cigerettes and beer, get on a plane, hell... just to get a damn library card. Why the hell some people wouldn't want the audience who is electing someone to the highest office in the free world to have an ID is beyond me.

"All eligible citizens can and should be automatically registered to vote," and it's the government's "responsibility" to see that it happens, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday.

In a call to modernize voter registration, Holder noted that many elections officials still are manually processing new applications, many of them handwritten -- a situation that produces errors and confusion at the polls, he said.

The state chairman of Indiana's Democratic Party resigned Monday as a probe of election fraud in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary widened.

State law requires a presidential candidate to gather 500 valid signatures in each county to qualify for the ballot. Barack Obama may not have met it. Investigators think 150 of the 534 signatures the Obama campaign turned in for St. Joseph County may have been forged.

~snip~

Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, who is black, said vote fraud is rampant in African-American districts like his in Alabama.

"The most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African-American community is the wholesale manufacture of ballots at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt," Mr. Davis said. "Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too mentally impaired to function cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights."

~snip~

"Concerns about voter identification laws affecting turnout are much ado about nothing," concluded researchers at the universities of Delaware and Nebraska after examining election data from 2000 through 2006.

~snip~

This year there have been investigations, indictments or convictions for vote fraud in California, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Maryland. In all but one case, the alleged fraudsters were Democrats.

~snip~

Fraud of the magnitude which swings elections typically combines absentee ballot fraud and voter registration fraud. At least 55 employees or associates of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now have been convicted of registration fraud in 11 states, says Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center, who's written a book about ACORN.

Of 1.3 million new registrations ACORN turned in in 2008, election officials rejected 400,000.

While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive voter fraud scheme.

In a story ignored by the national media, in April a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee.

Sowers received a five-year prison term for each of the 10 counts, but Circuit Court Judge Charles Webster permitted Sowers to serve those terms concurrently, according to the Tunica Times, the only media outlet to cover the sentencing.

Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.

In the trial, forensic scientist Bo Scales testified that Sowers’s DNA was found on the inner seals of five envelopes containing absentee ballots.

This wasn’t Sowers’s first run-in with the law. Sowers previously had her probation revoked for disturbing the peace at a junior high school library, the Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported in 1990. During a hearing at that time, Sowers played the race card. She claimed to be the victim of “an attempt by powerful whites to silence” her, the newspaper reported. It didn’t work. She was ordered back to prison to complete the remaining two years of a three-year sentence she received for check forgery.

Ads by GoogleFollow The 2012 CaucusesPick a President, Not a Party Your Voice Can Take America Back! www.americanselect.orgThe NAACP has had other problems with voter fraud. The NAACP National Voter Fund registered a dead man to vote in Lake County, Ohio, in 2004. That same year, out of 325 voter registration cards filed by the NAACP in Cleveland, 48 were flagged as fraudulent.

But the NAACP’s voter fraud record doesn’t approach that of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. At least 54 individuals employed by or associated with ACORN have been convicted of voter fraud.

Voter fraud, sometimes called electoral fraud, is a blanket term used by lawyers that encompasses a host of election-related improprieties including fraudulent voting, voter registration fraud, perjury, forgery, counterfeiting, impersonation, intimidation, and identity fraud.

And ACORN, which filed for bankruptcy last November, was itself convicted of voter fraud in Nevada in April. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 10 in Las Vegas. ACORN was also banished from Ohio in 2010 when it settled a state racketeering filed against it by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a project of the Buckeye Institute. Under the settlement ACORN, which is now reorganizing its state chapters under different names, agreed never to return to the state.

Election experts say voter fraud is fairly common, but progressive activists typically insist that the crime is virtually nonexistent. Republicans, they say, routinely exaggerate claims of voter fraud in order to whip their political base into a frenzy and push for voter ID laws. Liberals say such laws are unfair, and claim that they discourage minorities and the poor from voting.

The NAACP’s Jealous said Monday at the group’s 102nd annual convention in Los Angeles that photo ID laws are part of an attempt to disenfranchise minorities through some “of the last existing legal pillars of Jim Crow.” Such laws stem from “the worst and most racist elements” in conservative Tea Party groups, he said.

Stephen Colbert, the liberal comedian who portrays an overbearing conservative Republican on his cable TV show “The Colbert Report,” broadcast a segment this week ridiculing Republicans for treating voter fraud as a serious problem.

Some Democrats, however, aren’t laughing. The office of District Attorney Brenda F. Mitchell, a registered Democrat who serves Mississippi’s 11th Circuit Court District, successfully prosecuted Sowers. Mitchell was appointed to the post by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour in January 2010 after the previous DA resigned. She’s now seeking the Democratic nomination for the office in a primary election scheduled for Aug. 2.

Mitchell doesn’t appear to be a conservative. She served as a legal consultant to the far-left, New York-based public interest law firm the Center for Constitutional Rights. That firm represented ACORN in an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a federal law defunding the activist group. Mitchell didn’t return calls seeking comment for this article.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, is also no conservative. But she won a conviction against Joshua Reed for voter registration fraud in 2004 when she was the Hennepin County, Minn. Prosecutor.

“It was very important for the public integrity of our electoral system that somebody, if they do something like this, gets charged, gets convicted and gets consequences,” Klobuchar said at the time.

If I said what I want to do with him, Barry and everybody associated with this admin..I'd get locked up. I want them to all move to Guam and watch it tip over...or maybe Haiti...along with everybody from the Black Caucus....

If I said what I want to do with him, Barry and everybody associated with this admin..I'd get locked up. I want them to all move to Guam and watch it tip over...or maybe Haiti...along with everybody from the Black Caucus....

Shit - I was hoping great white sharks descended on Hawaii while he was bodysurfing in the ocean,

QUITMAN, GA (WALB) - 12 former Brooks County officials were indicted for voter fraud. The suspects are accused of illegally helping people vote by absentee ballot.

State officials launched an investigation after an unusually high number of absentee ballots were cast in the July 2010 primary election. "As a result of their grand jury findings 12 individuals were indicted in that particular matter and we will be trying that case in a court of judicial law instead of a court of public opinion so that will be pending this next year," said District Attorney Joe Mulholland.

The defendants include some workers in the voter registrar's office and some school board members. They are Angela Bryant, April Proctor, Brenda Monds, Debra Denard, Lula Smart, Kechia Harrison, Robert Denard, Sandra Cody, Elizabeth Thomas, Linda Troutman, Latashia Head, and Nancy Denard.

If I said what I want to do with him, Barry and everybody associated with this admin..I'd get locked up. I want them to all move to Guam and watch it tip over...or maybe Haiti...along with everybody from the Black Caucus....